Category: Place Names

Thrushing Meadow was the 18th Century name for the piece of land that ran below the Barony, between it and the Manse. It is now Manse Road as shown in the picture. Thrushing is an old Scots language term that has nothing to do with birds as previous writers have suggested, but simply means threshing.

We have recently been looking at the origin of Halfway Street, or the Haef Weg. In this 19th Century map we see that Halfway extended all the way to Portencross Castle and the harbour. Where do we get the idea that Halfway derives from Haef Weg or “the way to the sea”? In old Norse the

Recently we have been exploring our Nordic past (see this post) as expressed in the place names of the Portencross area. We know that, prior to his mysterious death and beheading at the Battle of Renfrew (1164), we were part of the territory of Somerled mac Gillebride, the Norse-Gaelic King of Mann and Lord of

We have discovered that our Kilbride became a distinguishable separate parish when we were separated from our mother Parish church to the North of Lamlash in 1567. We have also discovered that the name Kilbride first came into use for our church lands in 1337 when these lands, along with a large chunk of Arran

The Chapel of St Brigid at Margnaheglish, Arran In 1337, Sir John de Menteith gave a considerable amount of land to Kilwinning Abbey. These lands included a huge portion of Arran and also lands we now recognise as our village centre. In these medieval times the King owned all the lands but recognised feudal Earls

I am finally finding a lot more detail on our village origins and I am currently working through how it all fits our history. Previously local historians had suggested we got the Kilbride name from an ancient church settlement in our area. This is a little true – I have been able to go right